User Contributed Notes 12 notes

After a bit of digging around I found that this was because the flash movie was not running in the right version. There is a ming option that is mentioned in other posts but does not seem to be well documented and that is:

ming_useswfversion(setversion)

This makes the world of a difference as it sets what version of flash ming outputs its movies as.

So the monent I added:

ming_useswfversion(6)

To the top of my php I not only did the createEmptyMovieClip function work but so did the loading and the variable was accessible. Huruh!

Sorry Guys ....the /box.x syntax is for fash version 4 ... and _root.box._x is used for flash version 5 ....Ming >= 0.2 assumes version 5 by default .... to use version 4 syntax, you must use ming_useswfversion before ...

I have used ming for several years now for injecting variables into flash, usually for menus. In a recent move to a new server all the ming/php stopped working. Ming was working and properly installed but the variables just weren't apparent within the flash movie.

The old server is running:ming-0.2a_1 LGPL'ed Flash 4/5 movie output library with many languages php4-ming-4.4.1_1 The ming shared extension for php

The new one is running:ming-0.3.0_3 LGPL'ed Flash 4/5 movie output library with many languages php5-ming-5.2.6_1 The ming shared extension for php

So the way I have always done this is to put all my data together in php, and then put it into an array/variable in Flash. I then create a movie clip and load my movie.swf (made by hand in flash) into the movieclip.

I know there are now cleaner ways of getting data loaded into Flash (even directly from Flash without ming) but as I have many many movies out there using ming it is far easier to change a few lines of php to get them working again than change every flash movie.

So what stopped working. Well this took me a while to work out, and even know I am not 100% sure but I can tell you what does work and how I got there.

Firstly I needed some more debugging, and so installing the flash debug player http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html and 'Flash Tracer' https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3469 enabled me to see trace output of the ming movie and my loaded movie (flash_file_created_by_hand.swf). If you don't already know then this is worth knowing about. I had to play around a bit to get the debug player to write its log file, but it is worth it. Make sure you have the write settings when you publish your movie otherwise you will not be able to see the trace output.

So now I can see trace... well I used to this run a few checks to see for instance if the movie clip was there :

and so I played around.. and I could see that the movie clip 'mc' was being created and that the movie flash_file_created_by_hand.swf was being loaded into it but well not much else. So I still coudn't see what was happening to the data. I currently suspect that the loadMovie was loading the movie into level0 or _root rather than into /mc (_root.mc) as thus wiping out the ming vabiables.. but I can't be sure. Given that the trace of the target etc happens before the loadmovie function I think this is entirely possible.

Anyhow, I thought I may aswell try to do this a differt way.. that is create the movieclip from actionsript rather than with php/ming.. ie:

There is some difficulty adressing objects in the swfmovie using swfaction, at least when using Windows and Flash Player 9. I debugged the .swf file generated with php ming in
Adobe Flash CS3 and saw that my references on swfdisplayitems was not set correctly. I tried labelling a submovie (swfsprite object) "showmovie", but the actionscript did not seem to be able to reference the object. The debugging in Adobe Flash 9 showed the "showmovie" object to instead have the labelling "_level0.instance1", I adjusted the code and then was able to manipulate the objects in my swfmovie. The naming scheme seems to follow this "_level0.instanceX" labelling, check by debugging your .swf movies generated from php ming at least in Windows+Flash player 9 to check if swfdisplayitem's method setname also does not work here.

//play button$b = new SWFButton();$b->addShape(rect_two(0, 0xff, 0), SWFBUTTON_HIT | SWFBUTTON_UP | SWFBUTTON_DOWN | SWFBUTTON_OVER);$b->addAction(new SWFAction("play();"),SWFBUTTON_MOUSEDOWN);$i = $movie->add($b);?>it has to be run during every frame for the buttons to be in every frame... hope that helps somebody....

When a browser tries to print flash, the autoscaling can make it look ugly. users have to right click on the flash and select "print" to get it to print properly. (so that thier flash player is handling the printing, not the browser) If you dont want to require this of your users, you can create a print button with the following action:

getURL('print:', '/');

by default, this prints ALL frames. to avoid this, just put:

$m->labelFrame("#p");before:$m->nextFrame();

where $m is your SWFMovie. the #p label denotes a printable frame. (this also allows you to build your movie, then throw the print button into the next frame and not have it show up when you print. )